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LM&P Touts Retro Wear for Intensity

Racy? Sexist? That describes a new consumer and business-to-business campaign breaking next month from Lawrence, Mayo & Ponder, Newport Beach, Calif., for Pure Intensity Clothing. Print, direct mail and point-of-sale ads tout the San Clemente, Calif., clothing maker’s signature item: velvet bowling/lounge shirts that LM&P co-creative director Bruce Mayo describes as “swing/pimp” wear. Spending on the campaign is under $1 million. Pure Intensity is a fast-growing 3-year-old company started in a garage. LM&P won the business three months ago without a review. The ads display the shirt against a flaming red background. Accompanying black script offers slogans such as, “Even wearing 100% polyester, you won’t get as moist as most chicks will.” Another ad references a noted TV pimp/informant character from the 1970s: “Some kids wanted to be Starsky. Some wanted to be Hutch. We wanted to be Huggie Bear.” LM&P designed hang tags for the shirts that contain florescent condoms and the message, “When was the last time you were at a party and you needed an extra button?” A warning explains that the prophylactics are for “novelty use only.” Mayo said that when the creative team was brainstorming people would walk by and say, “Wow, that shirt’s pimp.” “Pimp used to be a bad word, now it’s kind of cool,” he said. The agency team who created the print ads includes Mayo and co-creative director Lynda Lawrence, art director Bil Dicks, copywriter Dick Underwood and designer Mike Berg.